I hope your Penelope makes a full and inexpensive recovery and that the seizure was a one-time reaction to panic. I'll be thinking of her.

Years ago, when I had that problem, I simply put a layer of holly leaves over the dirt. Problem solved! The same cat also had a strange urge to pee on the bowl of fruit we'd have sitting out on the dining room table--oranges, apples, bananas--things we could grab for a quick snack. Obviously, we had to quit with the bowl of fruit. He was such a good kitty; it was just this little quirk that we had to accommodate. A really gross quirk, but in the scheme of things, just a little quirk. Here's another way to approach problem peeing. Once upon a time I had a cat who would jump up and pee on the kitchen counter (we had too many cats back then, so I didn't feel like I could really blame the cat). I started putting strips of packing tape, sticky side up on the counter. A couple of times getting all wrapped up in sticky tape, ended that cat's interest in jumping on the counter.

At the age of 42 I've learned that time passes very quickly (especially as you watch your children grow). I savor every minute I have with my son. He'll be out of the house before I know it!

For everyone who is making a different educational choice for their children, there are newbies like me to fill in the ranks!

One year we grew butter lettuce from seed and decided that was the very best lettuce in the world. So that's what we buy now.

Beautiful! My very best friend used punched copper as a backsplash as well when she redid her kitchen. What did you use for your countertop?

We have the Dyson Ball Animal, which we just got a couple of months ago after using an Oreck for many years. With 4 cats and a dog, it really does the job. However, I find that it's really heavy and I vacuum less because of it, which means I have to empty it 4-5 times while vacuuming. I am *really* bothered by loud noises, so I try to get the dh to do the vacuuming or I pay the ds $10 to do it while I sit out back with the dog, who is terrified by vacuums.

Ds has been taking piano through our district's Homeschool Resource Center for 3 years now. His teacher is allowed to use her space for private lessons after school hours. She charges us the same as she does her homeschool students--$20 for a half-hour lesson. I know she has a degree in music from University of Minnesota. If I were find a teacher via a music store or someone teaching out of their home, the rate would be more like $45 for a half-hour lesson. And at a music store, it would probably be a group lesson. It'll be nice for ds's piano teacher to be able to fold ds into the regular school day this year, instead of teaching him at 4 in the afternoon.

I have no idea. I'd probably scrape them into a terrarium and see what they grow into and then decide how freaked out to be.

I do so much better if I have a quiet hour to myself of drinking coffee before the ds gets up. Of course, you have more kids and younger kids, so that's hard. Fortunately ds is a night owl--when he was 18 months old I got a job where I worked from 5:30-9:30 (getting home around 10 in the evening) and I BEGGED dh to try to keep ds up so that I could put him to sleep. So ever since then he stays up until at least 10--often 11 and sleeps until anywhere from 7:30-8:30. I have the dh get me up anywhere from 6 to 6:30 and that gets me my quiet time. But on the rare occasion ds gets up early, before I've had my time, he understands I still need my time and. I greet him, of course, when he wakes up, but then he does something quiet like reading in bed. Perhaps you could get the older kids to help with the little guys? Ever since ds was born, I've had awful problems with insomnia. I take Trazodone at night. It was originally developed as an antidepressant, and while it was found to not be very effective as such, it was found to be a fairly effective sleep aid. I take anywhere from 100-200 mg at night, depending on how much I've already wound down (some people take up to 600 mg at night!), and I also find I need more during PMS. It gives me a decently restful sleep, which affects my mood positively when I wake up. I've taken it since 2002, and while I'm dependent on it for sleep, it's not the sort of thing you get "addicted" to like the hypnotics (Ambien, Lunesta, etc.).

One year for my birthday the dh (and we were newly married) got me some comfy jammies. Nothing sexy about them at all. I thought it was odd, but sweet. Instead of a robe, in the morning I put on this black, oversized chenille cardigan that I've had SINCE HIGH SCHOOL. It's all threadbare now, it has like 2 buttons left, it's really just ghastly. So with my birthday coming up next week, I picked out a big ol' zippered chenille hoodie at QVC and emailed it to the dh and asked him to get me that for my birthday as a replacement for the ghastly sweater and that he could surprise me with the color. He told me he'd get me some nice new jammies as well. To me, perfect! It'll be my teaching ensemble. :)

We don't do the flu vaccine here, even though I work in a hospital occasionally (not in patient care though). I think 6 years of public school (and me being a very active volunteer) have inured us against most germs. We eat a healthy diet, the dh and I wash our hands frequently (ds is not so good about it). When one of us starts showing signs of the flu we all start on a round of Oscillo and that seems to shorten the duration for the sickie and does a pretty good job of protecting the rest. Of course, this is coming from someone who currently has walking pneumonia. I went to the doctor on Tuesday for back pain, she heard me cough, had a chest x-ray done and voila, pneumonia. But other than the achy back and the cough I don't feel sick and I've been getting things done as usual. The doctor doesn't know if it's viral or bacterial so I'm taking a round of antibiotics to see if it helps. And we're still planning on going camping this weekend.

Oh gosh, I hardly ever call ds *or* dh by their proper names. Ds is Matt-Tron, Bee-Boop, Honey, Honey Bunny, Sweetie, Sugar, Sugar Booger, BooBot. Dh is Boop, Honey, Baby or Sweetie. With the common nicknames they share, sometimes they don't know who I'm talking to.

My ds is 11, he likes watching scary things with the dh, but he has a big imagination that runs wild at night. So he sleeps in bed with me and the dh sleeps in ds's bed. I was the same way as a child and I was so grateful my dad would let me sleep in his bed (my mom always slept on the couch). Of course the dh and I would like to be sleeping together, but we find other ways to have intimate time with each other. We know that very soon ds will move on to his own bed and we will have the rest of our lives to cuddle in bed. It works well for us because I'm more prone to insomnia, whereas the dh falls asleep immediately and SNORES. Even when it was the two of us I spent many nights on the couch so I wouldn't harass the dh and he could get a good night's sleep and I could too. My best friend has a 13yo dd who still sleeps with her. About 10 years ago their family bought an old, vacant Victorian that was in tremendous disrepair and had had squatters living there (when they were cleaning it out they pulled out like 10 manky mattresses). For me, it would have been a creepy, scary place to live and to sleep and while they've done a lot of work on the place, there's still much more to do to erase the kind of vague creepiness of the place. So I completely get why the 13yo sleeps with mom (dad sleeps on the living room couch because both he and his wife snore terribly). Having had a temperament very similar to my ds's, I firmly believe that no one should ever go to bed with anxious feelings. Feeling safe is important to a good night's sleep, so I'll let the ds share a bed with me as long as it takes.

We use condoms. My husband, off and on, considers the big V. But I figure, I'm 42, who knows when I will go into menopause. We've been using condoms our whole relationship (except for the part where we decided to make a baby), what's a few more years? Also, I know that if the dh had his way, we would have had more children. We've been together for 23 years, married for 16. We still enjoy each others company tremendously, so I really don't see us divorcing. But if that strange thing were to happen, I'd want him to have the opportunity to have more children without a V reversal.

I understand how you're feeling. Even though I have everything purchased and ready to go I keep obsessively checking here to see what other people are using and how they're liking what they're using. I'm already feeling a little unsure about TT, but I'm telling myself it's okay, a lot of people here *do* like it and if I want we can change it out next year.

I know some of us have already started and some of us have not. This is my first year homeschooling and I've carefully thought about what I want to accomplish and bought my materials and am waiting excitedly/nervously for our first day of school on Sept. 7. The materials I am *most* excited about using are History Odyssey, Level 2 Ancients. What are you all most excited about?

I did not. I'm not sure why I didn't. Maybe because it was a bigger procedure and I was in school at the time. The thing that brought the ablation on was that I had a really bad bleeding episode while I was working in the laboratory. I got my work done, and then drove to pick my ds from school, feeling like I was going to pass out from loss of blood the whole way. It's strange and disturbing to feel like you're going to faint while you're sitting and I was afraid I wasn't going to make it. I *never* ever wanted to feel that way again, so I had the ablation done. Some months I have no periods, some I have very light periods and I've had one or two that were more normal without being excessive. I'm reasonably happy with the results. But I still get PMS every month at the appropriate time, which in my case involves anxiety and insomnia.

I just completed step 1 in a kitchen/bathroom remodel (they're right next to each other). That step 1 was moving the laundry room from the main bathroom to a bathroom off the family room. It'll be awhile before we can move on to the kitchen/bathroom project. I initially told my contractor (he's a very good friend, with very good taste who went into contracting to keep himself entertained and because he knows he's good at it) that I wanted to use IKEA cabinets in the kitchen. He was horrified. But I guess he got to talking to his brother about it and his brother put IKEA cabinets into one of his rental properties and liked the way they turned out. My contractor took a look for himself and totally changed his tune. I'm so glad we got through the laundry room project and remained friends. It's always so tricky mixing friendship with money. But I went to him because I knew he's a perfectionist and that he'd come up with the very best he could for the money. I paid more probably than I might have with someone else, but I'm thrilled with the results and make sure that room is spic and span whenever he comes over for dinner...because I know he's going to check and make sure I'm taking care of his work.

Of course I have to be an "Other" here. My dog, a basset/retriever mix named Roscoe, looks just like a retriever who's been cut off at the knees (just giving you all the mental picture). He is very protective of our family and travels during the night. He starts off in bed with ds, then sleeps in his chair at the living room window for awhile to make sure all is quiet. Then he sleeps in the hallway for awhile between ds's room and my and dh's room. Early in the morning he jumps up to our bed and sleeps at my feet. And then when the dh gets up Roscoe moves up and spoons me.

When my ds was at the age of having meltdowns, first I would try to get him to talk about what was so upsetting to him. Of course, by that point, it was usually useless. So then I'd ask him if he'd like to sit with me in the rocking chair until he'd calmed down. That usually worked, and then we could talk about what was really bothering him and come in with a solution. But even if some rocking didn't seem to help, I'd tell him his noises were hurting my ears and that I needed for him to go to his room and come out when he felt like he could talk. That usually did the trick pretty quickly. He's always been one to prefer to be in the same room with either me or the dh. I always *hated* sending him to his room--when I was a child my mom didn't give us a time-out...she BANISHED us to this hard wooden bench and it was never for a set amount of time--you never knew if you'd be there for 15 minutes or an hour and a half. But I tell myself it isn't really a time-out; he has complete control over when he leaves his room.

Me! Unfortunately I preordered it with Amazon and they're saying it'll be here by the 30th. I don't know if ds or I can wait that extra six days!

I'll speak up about this. After seeing my PCP for issues with anxiety we tried several different medications--Zoloft, Cymbalta and Paxil. None of them worked well for me and it was something I never felt like it was something my PCP was comfortable dealing with, so I started seeing a psychiatrist a few months ago. We're still working on stuff. I'm taking Prozac, which I don't think is going to work out. It seems to increase my anxiety. He's also given me a generous amount of Lorazapam which has been more helpful. I see him again next Tuesday, and I KNOW the Lorazepam is *not* a long-term solution, but I've got to find something that knocks down the anxiety. There are only a few friends left I feel comfortable enough with to do things and I fear I'm really crimping the dh and ds's social lives.

I wish I could be of help, but I think I'm in the same boat. For the last six months or so I've been having panic attacks and in fact just had pack up the ds and dh to leave a friend's house because I was hit with one. I hate it. The only thing that makes sense is hormones and I don't know what to do about it.

I've had good luck at my local community college during the summer months. They seem to put a lot of the art supplies on sale them.